I think you inadvertently agreed with him. Stalker is awesome when modded, but it's also a true testament of hypocrisy. Never have we seen a developer release such a buggy unpolished game and get such a pass for it. Could you imagine if Stalker were made by EA or Ubisoft? Totally different response. You had a game released in 2007 with graphics comparable to games of 2003. What made it even worse was how good the mods were. The showed the potential of the X-Ray Engine - kinda makes you wonder why the developers didn't utilize it more.
You said it yourself, the growing world caused a lot of headaches because of so many broken quests. Did it ever occur to you that's the reason why no one else went in that direction? Maybe other game studios knew the bugs that system would introduce so they opted for polish and functionality over a cutting edge system that didn't work.
As much as I enjoy Stalker, the (vanilla) games are slightly overrated IMO. The gameplay and atmosphere are awesome but they never seem finished because they're so buggy and unpolished. Seriously... they should've wrote a check to the creators of Stalker Complete and L.U.R.K. Just because he (Mkilbride) has a differing opinion than yours doesn't mean "he doesn't know". He bought a game, tried it, and it didn't work. You bought a game, looked for patches and fixes, installed graphical upgrades, and proclaim it to be one of the best ever. You're comparing apples to oranges.

The fact of the matter is that they are not buggy games, at least if you use the latest patches that have been there for ages. All 3 games are perfectly playable from the beginning to the end without major hiccups... of course, SOC wasn't always that stable when it launched, but they corrected it, and its obvious the response was VERY different than the one any EA or Ubi title would get because, ehem...at least they had the balls to be creative and try what nobody else had bothered trying before, all of that without a "lulz" PR campaign behind announcing how great the game is and bla bla bla.

Also, the growing world didn't cause as much broken quests as it could. Mole could die if you were too slow (and if it did, just use your autosave from the beginning of the level), and so could Guide...but the first was easily solvable (autosave) and the second one wasn't needed to finish the game (unless you wanted to see the other endings).

About the mods, they are a totally different animal on their own. The latest mods require TONS of ram in order to work properly, and add so many chances to the game that maybe GSC don't even like those changes on their own. Whatever: the point is that the game is not unpolished nor buggy, thats plain false. Does it get better with mods? Sure it does, just as Half Life 2 gets better with Cinematic mod, but thats about it. And because there are VERY good mods for Stalker it means the game has even more replayability than, probably, any other title (for FPS genre) out there.

And I'm not saying you must love Stalker... I'm saying you need to understand what it is. I don't like Bioshock at all (and I tried...), but that doesn't mean that I can say is a bad game (its not), so the same should be applied with other games.

So, no, Stalker ain't buggy, and if you try the latest one its a totally polished experience from the beginning to the end (although the first one is just better).

The fact of the matter is that they are not buggy games, at least if you use the latest patches that have been there for ages. All 3 games are perfectly playable from the beginning to the end without major hiccups... of course, SOC wasn't always that stable when it launched, but they corrected it, and its obvious the response was VERY different than the one any EA or Ubi title would get because, ehem...at least they had the balls to be creative and try what nobody else had bothered trying before, all of that without a "lulz" PR campaign behind announcing how great the game is and bla bla bla.
Also, the growing world didn't cause as much broken quests as it could. Mole could die if you were too slow (and if it did, just use your autosave from the beginning of the level), and so could Guide...but the first was easily solvable (autosave) and the second one wasn't needed to finish the game (unless you wanted to see the other endings).
About the mods, they are a totally different animal on their own. The latest mods require TONS of ram in order to work properly, and add so many chances to the game that maybe GSC don't even like those changes on their own. Whatever: the point is that the game is not unpolished nor buggy, thats plain false. Does it get better with mods? Sure it does, just as Half Life 2 gets better with Cinematic mod, but thats about it. And because there are VERY good mods for Stalker it means the game has even more replayability than, probably, any other title (for FPS genre) out there.
And I'm not saying you must love Stalker... I'm saying you need to understand what it is. I don't like Bioshock at all (and I tried...), but that doesn't mean that I can say is a bad game (its not), so the same should be applied with other games.
So, no, Stalker ain't buggy, and if you try the latest one its a totally polished experience from the beginning to the end (although the first one is just better).

I do love Stalker SoC + Complete. I think it's one of the best gaming experiences of the past decade. Having said that... Did you really just say they aren't buggy? That statement blows my mind... Shadow of Chernobyl - even with the latest patches it still suffers from the random "trader door is locked" bug, amongst many others. What about unbalanced AI? NPC's could see you 1/4 mile away without binoculars LOL!!! Clear Sky isn't buggy? Are you really going to say that with a straight face?

Anyways, it isn't just the bugs. If you installed Stalker SoC - with the mindset that it was released in 2007 - you will be greatly disappointed. The interface, the PDA, HUD are all severely dated compared to it's contemporaries. Let's look at the games released in the same year:

Crysis

The Witcher

Mass Effect (Xbox 360)

BioShock

Call of Duty 4

Not everyone cares about mods, development cycle, or excuses - they're comparing one vanilla game to another. Doom 3 and Half-Life 2, which were released 3 years earlier, were even significantly more polished and refined than Stalker. You figure in the 2008 release of Dead Space and Fallout 3 plus Mass Effect being ported to PC and it frames what a lot of people see when they see Stalker: a game with potential but was already dated upon released and never shook the "buggy" image.

Again, I really enjoy Stalker, but I can see why some don't care for it much.

Well, the first series was pretty bad and really made it seem like a Indie studio with no budget was producing them.
The first series of games I would have been really impressed with if it was Indie.
But it wasn't.
So it was far from impressive.

No. It's a little rough around the edges, but it gets my, and many many others, vote for all time greatest pc game.

Stalker Complete is the only way to play the Stalker games without them being a buggy mess.
Letting the community fix and patch your game is not a good thing in my book.

Stop picking on the beleaguered Ukrainian developer. The entire Stalker series is completely playable till the end with only official patches. You can put your book away or write something in it about the practices of those who are churning out garbage games while rolling in cash and having control over all of their IP.

Not everyone cares about mods, development cycle, or excuses - they're comparing one vanilla game to another. Doom 3 and Half-Life 2, which were released 3 years earlier, were even significantly more polished and refined than Stalker. You figure in the 2008 release of Dead Space and Fallout 3 plus Mass Effect being ported to PC and it frames what a lot of people see when they see Stalker: a game with potential but was already dated upon released and never shook the "buggy" image.
Again, I really enjoy Stalker, but I can see why some don't care for it much.

You seem to be missing the one big thing with your list of titles and why they're 'polished.' All of those games were linear and considerably smaller than any of the STALKER series has you in (With Fallout 3 being a terrible 'vanilla' launch.)

Stop picking on the beleaguered Ukrainian developer. The entire Stalker series is completely playable till the end with only official patches. You can put your book away or write something in it about the practices of those who are churning out garbage games while rolling in cash and having control over all of their IP.

Agreed. GSC also tried to patch the game the best they could, considering little resources they had. They were a small team, after all. This says a lot because bigger companies, wealthy companies, like Bethesda don't bother to patch their games as they should.